UK Edition
Theresa May admits just one in 10 foreign national offenders released into the community is tagged
Thousands of foreign criminals due to be deported are on the loose in Britain after Theresa May admitted that the Home Office had failed to tag them or send them home.
Mrs May, in a letter sent last month when she was Home Secretary, admitted that fewer than one in 10 foreign prisoners who have been released into the community were monitored.
The news sparked concern from MPs who said that the fact so many had been released and had not been monitored was "lamentable" and created a “clear risk of absconding”.
In a letter to MPs, Mrs May admitted that just 493 out of 5,789 "foreign national offenders" who have been freed prison into the community are monitored using "radio-frequency tags".
All of the offenders – many of whom are likely to have been jailed for violent offences - who had been released were “subject to ongoing deportation action. We do not give up trying to deport these individuals”, Mrs May said.
However the pace is incredibly slow with just 102 foreign national prisoners from the European Union sent back in the 16 months between February 2013 and June 2016.
Mrs May said she hoped that this rate would pick up “as new practices and procedures become established across Europe”.
The figures are an echo of the foreign national prisoners’ scandal when the Home Office admitted that 1,013 foreign national prisoners had been released into the community.
When it emerged that so many foreign national prisoners had been released in 2006 Charles Clarke, who was the then Labour Home Secretary, had to resign.
In her letter to Keith Vaz, the chairman of the Home Affairs select committee, Mrs May admitted 26 of the original 1,013 prisoners were still unaccounted for.
Mr Vaz said: "The utter failure to improve the management and removal of foreign national offenders has been lamentable.
"Despite firm commitments to improve, and a massive ten-fold increase in resources, the system appears to be totally dysfunctional."
"It is simply unacceptable that our allies in Europe and elsewhere are seemingly obstructing the transfer of their citizens, who have committed serious offences, back to their own countries.
"Regardless of Brexit, until the UK leaves the EU, the commitments made by Member-states must be honoured.'
Mr Vaz added that with fewer than 10 per cent tagged there was a "clear risk of absconding".
He said: “Given that 26 of the foreign national offenders who went missing when Charles Clarke was Home Secretary are still missing, one can only fear that the Home Office has not learnt any lessons from its past failures.”
In January last year it emerged that the number of foreign nationals in prison has remained at around 10,000 with the number removed from the UK peaking at 5,613 in 2008/09 and not matching that level since.
It was also revealed the Home Office was forced to pay out £6.2 million in compensation payments to 229 foreign national offenders because of delays in dealing with cases since April 2012 - an average of £27,000 each.
MPs then blamed a “worrying combination of a lack of focus on early action at the border and police stations, poor joint working in prisons, inefficient case-working, very poor management information and non-existent cost data”.